A day with Lana

Last week I attended a one day workshop with Lana Wilson at Saddleback College in South Orange County. I was looking forward to this day since I read about it in her website... May or June I think. I emailed the instructor at the college and did not hear anything for 3-4 months, I thought that I was not going to be so lucky to get in. But I did! and it was great to attend.

Lana is a very lively and energetic lady. Her life is full of experiences from the many years being a potter, her many travels, her children, a life well lived.
She incorporates times in her life as she is describing her clay work, how a technique happened to be created when she was doing something totally different from clay, or how the night before she was thinking while lying in bed of how to improve a technique that she would show us that day. She is truly fun to watch and listen to. I wish her several days workshops were near by, I'd go in a hearbeat.



While she showed us a lot of stuff in the one day workshop, I will talk about a few things that stuck. She is working with colored slips right now in creating functional pottery, something that was not done by her years ago. She adds the slip to a wet slab by brushing coats of different colored slips. And then proceeds to alter the clay in many ways by carving, stretching, throwing it on the table, stamping and so much more. She created several pieces in the day and I manage to get some pictures of a cup, vase and a couple plates.



Lana is very giving with sharing a lot of her techniques of doing clay. I see her as a kind person who probably saw in us the eagerness to learn and to create something new, beautiful and fun with our own hands. She gave us that sense that it was okay to do whatever we wanted with what she taught us and if in the process we learned something new, or a way to improve (hard to believe) to take on it and just do it.

Thank you to Richard White at Saddleback for letting me in, and to Lana for being a great teacher and an inspiring me to take clay to a new level.

How could I

Well, here I am again with another apology post. I am so bad in keeping this blog current, I don't know what it is?? Well, I do know a couple reasons why... but there is more than a couple, but I will not get into the couple ones I'm talking about. I am finally walking much better than the last couple months after surgery in July. I can say that walking as my exercise is great, so that has me a little happy that I can walk with my neighbors again.

Also, I am missing the girl now that she is gone to College, so that is taking some time to adjust. Sadly to top it off I had to put my sweet kitty down a few weeks ago, not having her has been very hard. Every time I think of her I start crying.
She had been sick since the beginning of the year and we were trying to figure out what was wrong with her. In the end it was just too much to put her thru more tests. She lost a lot of weight in the meantime and gain some back and ultimately lost some more. Sassy was a cat who LOVED to be petted, she was the neighborhood's cat and paraded herself everywhere. Many of my neighbors are sad to hear she is not here anymore. She was quite a character always demanding of my attention, she also outlived many cats around us that were lost to coyotes. She was a smart and loving kitty that will be missed greatly.

I will post in the next couple days about a clay workshop that I took a few days ago with a very fun and wonderful clay artist from the San Diego area. I have admired her work for several years and felt very lucky to attend the one day demonstration she gave at the local college.

So without making anymore promises of keeping this always current, I'll just say, hasta luego.

Taking care of business

I had knee surgery two days ago on the 29th, all went well. Except that yesterday morning I was not feeling pain, I was actually feeling pretty good so I saw no need to take painkillers. SOB! by 6pm the pain was so ever present, took two pills and it took about 3 hours for the pain to start fading away, by that time I took another dose and poor baby was crying wishing that I had not been hopping around all day.

Another reason for not taking the meds was that they make me so sleepy, dizzy and kind of depressed. So while I'm making one thing better (pain) I'm screwing up others....ugh. Today I have been in and out of sleep like in a fog, but oh well pain has reduced a lot, so, so far good for that. Thanks to Glen, my sister Laura and Christina for being there for me and taking such good care, specially Glen who did the driving and heavier load the first two days.

As it is I am taking care of business in the knee dept. but not on the clay dept. Just a couple orders to get done but not much
that I need to worry since the people waiting knew that I would be out of commission.

Back to the pillow. Later.

Getting old

I found out yesterday that I may need knee surgery on my right knee, not what I wanted to hear. I had surgery on that same knee 15 years ago when I had a torn meniscus. Everything went well then and I really didn't have any problems since. But about a month ago I twisted the knee when I was trying to get in the car, didn't hurt horribly but it has been a constant nag to the point where I have slowed down my walking tremendously. And for those of you who know me you know that it was back in February that I started walking a lot after taking care of some health problems, and I have been able to lose 16 lbs.

But now I need to take care of this before it gets any worse. I am waiting for a call to set an appoinment for a MRI. It's funny that the first surgery I had was about the same time, I remember taking advantage of the 4th of July weekend to recover better w/o having to go to work for 4 days or something like that. And here I am now at the same time.... same knee and same problem, a torn meniscus.

I feel that once I turned 30 the warranty on my body expired and it started bringing on aches and pains, changes on body, the rate of hairloss quadrupled, depression set on bla bla bla. And don't get me going on turning 40!

I think the reason I didn't want to hear about surgery is because I haven't fixed my shoulders that have been bugging me since my late 30's... been putting it off for a looonggg time and now I have to take care of this first. Oh well, c'est la vie.

Tustin Chili Cook Off June 7th

Hey! come and see me and grab a bowl of chili! Sunday June 7th 11am to 6pm with all the sunny sun California has to offer. Don't miss the biggest Chili Cook Off over 40,000 heads will show up to eat, listen to music, drink beer, put their legs in a contest, and buy buy buy handmade...!!

http://events.ocregister.com/tustin-ca/events/show/85859801-tustin-street-fair-and-chili-cookoff

Be there! I'll be waiting for you. Old Town Tustin, you really can't miss it.